Feb 23, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software
Welcome to our Shipping Methods Explained blog series. In this series, we will deep dive into fulfillment methods – that is, how businesses fulfill their online orders and get products to their customers.
Sounds simple right? Well, in theory it is. You could hop on your itty-witty bicycle and hand-deliver your product, mission accomplished. But consider the complexity when your company fulfills hundreds to thousands of orders daily, not to mention the skyrocketing shipping costs that could price you out of the market.
Managing inventory, navigating each carriers’ specific requirements, calculating the lowest cost from thousands of shipping options… it’s a daunting task. That’s why more and more businesses are outsourcing their fulfillment methods.
Are you ready to outsource your fulfillment? Let’s analyze your options to help you decide the best method for your business. In this article, we’ll discuss Multimodal and Intermodal Shipping. What is multimodal and intermodal shipping? What are the pros/cons of each? How do they compare/contrast and which one right for my business, if any? Let’s dive in.
(Check out our previous articles on Dropshipping, FaaS, and FBA/FBM. And be sure to check back for future articles where we’ll cover even more fulfillment methods)
What is Multimodal vs. Intermodal?
Multimodal transport is also known as ‘combined transport’ because the products are moved using different modes of transportation along the fulfillment journey, but under the terms of a single contract and facilitated by a multimodal transport operator (MTO). Whether by road, sea, air or rail, or a combination of them all, the MTO is liable for the entire journey from beginning to end, although they often use sub-contracted carriers that specialize in each mode of transportation.
Intermodal transport involves the use of an intermodal container which carries products throughout the entire fulfilment journey; regardless of the type of transportation, the same intermodal container will be offloaded from one method and loaded onto the next without ever moving the product inside.
The main difference between multimodal and intermodal transport is: 1) how the product is transferred between transportation modes, and 2) how the contracts are made with each carrier.
Product Transfer
With multimodal transport, the products or commodities are loaded and unloaded into transportation-specific containers when transferring, say, between sea and rail, rail and ground, etc. Excessive product transfer may result in product damage or loss; you may have heard the phrase “fallen out of a truck” when asking your relative about an expensive purse they clearly can’t afford. In fact, product damage during transportation costs up to $0.48 per pallet annually, which certainly adds up over time with larger supply chains.
This is the benefit of intermodal transport, because the products are loaded into a single intermodal container to be used for several modes of transportation. The products themselves will remain secure as the container itself is loaded and offloaded from a truck, train, ship or air freight.
Using one intermodal container allows for safer packing of products, which results in less damage and loss, as well as quicker and more efficient movement between freight methods. For this reason, intermodal transport tends to be less costly than multimodal transport.
Contracting Carriers
During a multimodal transport, the shipper creates a single contract with the Multimodal Transport Operator (MTO), which is wholly responsible for the cargo from the origin to the end destination. This allows the shipper to simplify the communication process by just working with a sole transport provider or agent. Also, the simplified communication allows for more accurate shipping updates, tracking notifications, and opportunities for optimization. On the other hand, the shipper must rely on the MTO to select the best/cheapest routes for their cargo, and flexibility is limited.
Conversely, during an intermodal transport, the shipper must create multiple contracts with individual carriers. While there is only one intermodal container, it will be passed between many liable parties, increasing the complexity for the shipper in terms of communication and optimization across carriers; however, the shipper has more flexibility to independently choose each leg of the fulfillment journey.
In summary:
Multimodal Transport
- Multiple carriers, one contract with MTO
- Product transfers containers between transports
- Enhanced communication and optimization, but heavy reliance on MTO routes
- More chance of product damage and loss
Intermodal Transport
- One intermodal container, multiple contracts with carriers
- Products remain secure in single shipping container
- More flexibility to choose your own routes along fulfillment journey, but more complexity for the shipper
- Less chance of product damage and loss
In conclusion, shippers must determine if multimodal or intermodal is the right choice given their circumstances, i.e., is your product fragile or at risk of damage/loss, do you have the resources to schedule and manage carrier contracts, etc. Thankfully, smart fulfillment providers and 3PLs like ShipHero can help you determine the best way to ship.
Be sure to stay tuned to our Shipping Methods Explained series as we deep dive into the specifics of fulfillment.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 18, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #9: Automation.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #9: Automation
The mundane, the menial, the humdrum, the everyday monotony… these are the types of business activities that should and could be automated. Why spend your valuable time copy and pasting shipping information across your systems? Or manually inputting return information? Or constantly checking inventory levels? Let automation work for you!
As a business owner, your fulfillment provider should also understand that your time is your most valuable resource. If you are just starting out, you may be able to manually handle it all on your own. But when your business grows bigger and bigger, and the orders are rolling in, you risk spreading yourself too thin, giving yourself no time to get your head above water and focus on your business’s long-term strategy.
If you get to the point where the everyday tasks of your fulfillment process seems to be your only focus, it’s definitely the right time to switch to a fulfillment provider that can automate these for you.
ShipHero’s Automation Cookbook
For that reason, ShipHero has partnered with Alloy to unlock smart automations that improve inventory control and warehouse operations with just a few clicks, while integrating ShipHero with 60+ apps to improve the fulfillment experience and grow your business.
The few example recipes below from ShipHero’s automation cookbook give you a glimpse at the power of automation between workflows, and may enlighten you to possibilities you never thought possible.
Recipe: Send reorder emails or Slack notifications to staff for low inventory in ShipHero
Our workflow automates reorder emails to be sent to staff when there is low inventory in ShipHero. This ensures that your team can restock inventory at a reasonable pace and without over-stocking, and is a great way to organize the flow of customer traffic and inventory.
Recipe: Tag Shopify orders based on ShipHero delivery date
This workflow tags Shopify orders based on the ShipHero delivery date. This means that all orders are tagged by date allowing you to view which days are busy and how many orders are expected to ship out weekly. Tagging orders is a good way to stay organized especially when your store is expanding globally and there are multiple orders placed on the same day.
Recipe: Set a ShipHero threshold to notify store owner of low inventory
This workflow notifies you when your inventory is low in ShipHero. For instance, inventory levels are updated regularly and you receive inventory levels for each inventory item. When stock is low, you receive a notification. Immediate notifications to store owners are key to restocking your inventory and satisfying your eager customers. These notifications can be sent through Slack and email.
Recipe: If an order is still unfulfilled in ShipHero after 2 days, email me
This automation will schedule a workflow after 2 days. Then, it will check to see if the order is unfulfilled for greater than or equal to 2 days. This will trigger an email notification to the store owner. This frees you up from constantly checking the fulfillment status of your orders.
Recipe: Automate fulfillment for Gorgias returns requests in ShipHero
This workflow automates fulfillment for Gorgias return requests in ShipHero. When a customer requests a return on Shippo, a Gorgias request is immediately created and sent. This frees up time from going back and forth between Shippo and Gorgias and ensures no information is lost.
Recipe: Cancel ShipHero scheduled delivery if there is a Gorgias request
With this automation, customers can send in a support ticket for a cancellation request. Once your team marks it as a canceled order, an email is sent to the ShipHero fulfillment team so they won’t fulfill the order.
Recipe: Send ShipHero delivery updates via Klaviyo SMS
SMS messages can have open rates as high as 98% and you’re not limited to using them for promotional campaigns. With this workflow, you can send delivery updates to customers through a text message to leverage higher open and engagement rates.
In addition to the above, Alloy also has delivery update automations for Omnisend SMS, PostScript, SMSBump, and Tone, and more integrations are created all the time.
Our customers love the automation capabilities that ShipHero provides. We attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #10: Automation.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #6: Resilient Shipping! Viva la resilience. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 15, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #12: Professional services.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #12: Professional Services
If you want to grow your business, your Warehouse Management Software (WMS) needs to keep up by collecting and processing more data, offering users more capabilities and automation, and providing more customizable reports and integrations. As WMS grow more and more powerful with each iteration, naturally so does its complexity. That’s why business owners who want to get the most out of their WMS are turning to Professional Services offered by their fulfillment provider.
Customization
App developers try to make WMS interfaces as easy to use as possible, and often take a one-size-fits-all approach to developing their solution. When that doesn’t cut it for your business, Professional Services are the perfect way to custom-fit the solution to your exact specifications.
ShipHero customers can select a wide range of customization services that include (but are not limited to):
- Custom reports
- Custom invoices and labeling
- Custom API integrations
- And more!
Error Correction
Everyone makes mistakes! Professional Services are the easy way to get you right back on track with your WMS.
For error correction, ShipHero offers:
- Manual/Bulk Data correction
- Re-running Automation Rules
- Integration testing/debugging
- And more!
Consulting
Sometimes you just need an expert opinion. Warehouse process and development experts stand at the ready to help you figure out the tough problems.
ShipHero’s experts are available to provide:
- Warehouse Process Consulting
- API Consulting
- Onboarding Consulting
- And more!
So, does your fulfillment provider give you the attention and service that you need? Whether you need a quick fix over the phone or a more hands-on approach with our onsite visits, ShipHero helps its customers any way they can through their extensive list of Professional Service. Not only that, ShipHero maintains a community of customers that all chip in to help each other.
It’s this white-glove approach to service that brings an average of 100 new signups for our fulfillment service per day, and we attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #12: Professional Services.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #11: Integration Stack! Integrate-ful for your business. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 11, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software, Warehouse Operations
The incumbent President of the United States made quick work in demonstrating to our citizens and the rest of the world exactly what our country’s priorities will be for the next four years and beyond. Within his first week of taking office, President Joe Biden enacted a long list of executive orders that sought solutions to the pressing issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration, and climate change.
Sustainability has been of great importance to the Biden administration since his Vice Presidency, and continued to be a main aspect of his campaign during the 2020 election, so it came as no surprise when President Joe Biden signed an executive order to initiate his plan to combat climate change through a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.
No matter who you voted for, it’s time to get acquainted with his stance on climate change, what measures the government will be taking to lower our carbon footprint, and how the logistics industry will be impacted. In essence, it comes down to carbon emissions and the railroad.
Carbon Emissions
Under Biden’s leadership, the United States rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change, which calls us to determine a reduction target for emissions and direct our federal agencies to execute on that promise.
For example, US agencies have been directed to purchase American-made, zero-emission vehicles, and suspend new oil and natural gas leases on public lands in hopes to conserve at least 30% of federal lands and waters over the next ten years.
The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice also promises to make major public investments in automobile infrastructure, including 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, while accelerating R&D on battery technology and battery production. This is sure to increase production and widespread use of EV vehicles, buses, and trucks for transportation.
Impact to Logistics
Sustainability
As the current pandemic situation unfolds, sustainability in the supply chain has gone by the wayside as urgency and necessity push for speed and reliability in shipping. But even still, some shoppers opt to use the Amazon Day feature to try and offset their purchases with their rationale being, if they have to come here, at least let them bring more than one thing. Post-COVID however, sustainability will be sure to resume as a large priority for consumers and retailers once more.
For fulfillment providers, retailers will push for low-carbon and zero-carbon (if not negative) emissions throughout the supply chain. There will be a push for clean transportation options, namely electric vehicles (EV) including electric trucks for long-distance shipping, whereas air freight has the worst carbon emissions.
Although it remains unclear what Environmental Justice specifically entails, we don’t find it out of the realm of possibilities that a national carbon tax could be introduced similar to Canada, Britain or some US states, or rather an incentivized stimulus for low-emitting companies. If enacted, a carbon tax could make logistics companies like Amazon rethink their air-heavy fulfillment strategy and make way for 3PLs that are built on sustainable practices.
But where, WHERE, are these sustainable transportation methods coming from?, you may have shouted into your computer screen. Well, toot toot, the answer to that falls on…
The Railroad
Biden’s plan aims to spark “The Second Great Railroad Revolution”, a push to modernize US rail infrastructure, which will ensure that we have the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world — for both passengers and freight.
A US Rail Revolution will not only reduce pollution, by working with Amtrak and private freight rail companies to further electrify the rail system, but also provide workers with “good, union” jobs and stimulate investment in communities better linked to major metropolitan areas. In order to streamline the loan process and make capital more available for the railway industry, Biden has tapped existing federal grant and loan programs at the US Department of Transportation.
Impact to Logistics
Multi-modal
Currently, fulfillment is dominated by ground travel, with long-distance trucking and last-mile delivery vans. Although rail freight can carry 400 times what a single truckload can with much fewer emissions, the current process for fulfillment by rail is too complex and downright costly. However, Biden’s plan could be the answer for this.
By modernizing rail freight and designing it for today’s eCommerce world, rail freight could once again become a viable option, and 3PL providers that account for this shift could disrupt the logistics industry entirely by cornering the multi-modal transportation space.
Multi-modal transport (also known as combined transport) is the transportation of goods under a single contract, but performed with at least two different modes of transport, often performed by contracted sub-carriers. The carrier responsible for the entire carriage is referred to as a multimodal transport operator, or MTO.
So, any 3PL that can become the leading MTO could position themselves to become the 4th major player in logistics and fulfillment, with UPS and Fedex at capacity, and Amazon weighed down by its traditional infrastructure.
Conclusion
We’re no fulfill-osophers, but we do predict that a smart logistics provider like ShipHero, one built to scale through agility, will be perfectly positioned to quickly claim market share and delight their customers with sustainable shipping and multi-modal options.
Through use of already existing clean energy and green technologies, the logistics industry can lead the way towards sustainable practices in eCommerce supply chains. Moreover, the pandemic-caused boom of eCommerce has given rise to a plethora of opportunities and growth in the fulfillment space; and where money goes, progress follows.
Investments to improve fulfillment practices driven by big data and blockchain will be the spark necessary for companies to derive ROI from their sustainable practices, and effectively contribute to Green Joe’s climate plan.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 10, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #11: Integration Stack.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #11: Integration Stack
These days, all you need to start an online business is a laptop and a dream. With just a few clicks, more and more people are chasing their entrepreneurial passions by leveraging eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, which provide all the software solutions that they need to get their business up and running.
Online businesses today are piecemealed together by a whole assortment of cloud applications, created by different app developers with different methodologies, to accomplish a specific task, e.g, returns, transactional emails, shipping labels, etc. However, without a way to tie them all together, the benefits from the expertise are lost when the entrepreneur is forced to spend enormous effort in navigating from one app to another, figuring out how to transfer information between all of their tools.
So, the eCommerce platforms like Shopify are not inherently powerful in and of themselves; rather, the real power of these platforms lies in their ability to integrate seamlessly with multiple solutions, tying in expertise from a whole plethora of applications that are otherwise customized to do one, specific thing.
Similarly, fulfillment providers need to be able to integrate seamlessly into your business, not to mention offer automation tools to speed up your workflows, leaving you time to focus on what really matters.
The Fulfillment Integration Stack
Retailers have come to expect that their fulfillment provider integrates into the platforms and applications that they are already using, allowing them to transfer data cross-applications and simplify their business processes. However, this is often no easy task.
Only 3PLs and fulfillment providers that are born from agile methodologies and built to scale can offer the wide-ranging integration methods that retailers demand. Without them, they will only slow down your business and as the old adage goes: time is money.
ShipHero’s integration marketplace offers a suite of valuable integrations that make it easy to connect our customers to a long list of shipping carriers and ecommerce platforms. As seen with our recent integrations with Alloy and Returnly, ShipHero is constantly expanding our capabilities and partnering with companies so that our customers have the very best options when it comes to easy, one-click integrations.
Along with our direct integrations, we also have over 20 partners that provide integrations and systems expertise, as well as an open API so that users can code their own integrations and webhooks if it’s not already on our list.
Our customers love the integration that ShipHero provides. We attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #11: Integration Stack.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #12: Professional Services! At your service, professionally. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
